The rapid sale of the fifth, and the demand for a sixth edition of this
work, enable me to say that the precepts inculcated in it have been
fully borne out and confirmed by the practice of the Surgeons of the
Army now in the Crimea in almost every particular. To several of these
gentlemen I desire to offer my warmest thanks for the assistance they
have afforded. Their names are given with the cases and observations
they have been so good as to send me, and a fuller “Addenda” shall be
made from time to time, as I receive further information from them, and
others who will, I hope, follow the example they have thus set. More,
however, has been done; they have performed operations of the gravest
importance at my suggestion, that had not been done before, with a
judgment and ability beyond all praise; and they have modified others
to the great advantage of those who may hereafter suffer from similar
injuries. They have thus proved that if the Administrative duties of
the Medical Department of the Army have not been free from public
animadversion, that its practical and scientific duties have merited
public approbation; which I am satisfied, from what they have already
done, they will continue to deserve.
The precepts laid down are the result of the experience acquired in the
war in the Peninsula, from the first battle of Roliça in 1808, to the
last in Belgium, of Waterloo in 1815, which altered, nay overturned,
nearly all those which existed previously to that period, on all points
to which they relate. Points as essential in the Surgery of domestic as
in military life. They have been the means of saving the lives, and of
relieving, if not even of preventing, the miseries of thousands of our
fellow-creatures throughout the civilized world.
I would willingly imitate the example lately indulged in, by many
of the best Parisian surgeons, of detailing circumstantially the
improvements they have made in practical and scientific surgery;
the manner in which they were at first contested, and the universal
adoption of them which has succeeded, were it not that I might run the
risk of being accused of gratifying some personal vanity, while only
desirous of drawing the attention of the public to the merits of the
men who so ably served them in the last war, nearly all of whom are no
more; and who have passed away, as I trust their successors will not,
with scarcely a single acknowledgment of their services, except the
humble tribute now offered by their companion and friend.
4 Berkeley Street, Berkeley Square,
October 7, 1855.